Dear Penny,<\/p>\n
Having news of you has truly warmed my heart.\u00a0 I have been praying for you in a special way, hoping that your first weeks in consecrated life would prove joyful and fruitful, in spite of your family\u2019s opposition to your departure (don\u2019t worry, I\u2019m keeping them in my prayers too).\u00a0 So you can imagine how encouraged I was by your last email.\u00a0 Thanks be to God that he still calls young women like yourself to show the world that he is the great King!\u00a0 And thank God that he gave you the spiritual sensitivity to hear his quiet invitation, and the spiritual strength to accept it.\u00a0 A decision like yours in a society like ours takes almost as much courage as it did back in the years of the French Revolution, when today\u2019s amazing Brides of Christ offered their lives as a sacrifice for peace.<\/p>\n
These sixteen martyrs, including two convent servants, three lay sisters, and eleven professed religious of all ages, were first approached by the Revolutionary authorities in 1790.\u00a0 Representatives of the National Assembly had come to their convent in Compiegne (just north of Paris) in order to invite each of the sisters to abandon their vocation and come live as citizens in the New France.\u00a0 But the sisters wanted to continue living as nuns.\u00a0 This the Assembly couldn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 They sent another delegation to speak with each sister, one-on-one, thinking that peer pressure was keeping the nuns from coming to their senses.\u00a0 But still, they all wished to continue with their Carmelite way of life, their daily prayers and penances, shut off from the busy and exciting world of pleasure and power.<\/p>\n
The Assembly couldn\u2019t tolerate such a counter-witness to their Enlightenment creed.\u00a0 They convent was dispersed (along with all other religious houses in France).\u00a0 The nuns were forbidden to live in community or to wear a habit.\u00a0 They took lay clothes and lived separately, in small groups.\u00a0 But somehow they still managed to come together for prayer.\u00a0 Soon they decided to formally offer themselves to God as sacrifices for peace.\u00a0 He took them up on it.<\/p>\n
Since they continued their religious practices, they were arrested, imprisoned and then put on trial.\u00a0 It was towards the end of the Reign of Terror, and their ridiculous trial could have been considered surreal if its tragic consequences hadn\u2019t been so palpable.\u00a0 The entire community was condemned to the guillotine.<\/p>\n
They were loaded onto a cart and brought to the Place de la Nation.\u00a0 One by one each sister mounted the gallows, laid her head on in the block without any executioner having to touch her, and poured out her blood to God for the salvation of her fellow citizens.\u00a0 As they drove to the place of their martyrdom they were singing the Veni Creator, the same ancient hymn that is sung whenever a young woman makes her vows in the Carmelite Order; they were renewing their consecration to God by means of their voluntary acceptance of this Providential fate.\u00a0 The youngest was the first to climb the scaffold. The oldest was thrown abusively to the ground before she was killed, and, smilingly, spoke words of encouragement and forgiveness to her executioner.\u00a0 As the sixteen martyrs sealed their love for Christ with their blood, the usually frenzied crowd of onlookers was utterly silent.\u00a0 The only sound to be heard was the sisters\u2019 singing to Mary, their spiritual Mother \u2013 the dulcet, revered tones of the Salve Regina.\u00a0 Their mortal remains were thrown in a common grave with 1300 other victims of this modern revolution.<\/p>\n
Two days afterwards, however, the Reign of Terror came to an end.\u00a0 Their offering, so it would seem, had been accepted.\u00a0 And I am sure yours will be too.\u00a0 God knows how much this suffering world \u2013 in so many ways the sad result of the extremism of that same Revolution \u2013 needs your prayers, your penance, and your testimony.\u00a0 Thank you, and may God continue to bless you.<\/p>\n
Your loving uncle,<\/p>\n
Eddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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